BROOKVILLE — Council gave city manager Jack Kuntz the authority to enter into a contract with Horton Emergency Vehicles, of Grove City, Ohio, to purchase a new ambulance for the fire department at a cost not to exceed $340,000.

“I’ve talked to you before about our difficulties just in the industry of being able to get ambulances and fire trucks,” fire chief Ron Fletcher told council.

“What used to take months to build now takes years for a community to build and receive a piece of emergency equipment,” Fletcher continued.

Fletcher advised the last time he checked it takes approximately four years to design, build and receive a new ambulance.

Fletcher said the city has an opportunity to receive a new ambulance sooner than the estimated four years.

“We have an opportunity, working with our ambulance vendor (Horton), that occasionally a stock unit will go down the line and we’re being offered an opportunity to claim one of those stock units,” Fletcher advised.

“If we enter into an agreement with them currently, the anticipation is we an cut off approximately two years off that build,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher indicated the build time would be cut in half because Horton “over the year has moved their stock units very close to what we call the Brookville spec.”

“We have been building ambulances with this company for more than 20 years and a lot of things that used to be options are standard equipment,” Fletcher said.

“So, we find we did not need a great deal of changes made to this stock unit to make it match and fall in line with our other ambulances,” Fletcher continued.

Fletcher said to get the process going “the only expenditure we would have is the city will pay $75,000 out of this year’s budget.”

“It’s money that we already have available,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher indicated the money will be used to acquire the chassis.

“Any money left short of the $75,000 will be held by Horton and we will get 4.5 percent interest on that. We can pay them as much as we want on that, but we will not owe the balance until the ambulance arrives,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher said it is imperative to begin the process of purchasing a new ambulance in case one of the department’s current three ambulances is not available for service.

“My overall concern in why we need to get an ambulance in the pipeline is if we, God forbid, have a catastrophic failure of a unit such as a failure of an engine or transmission, that costs us months without one of those ambulance units,” Fletcher said.

“If we bend one up in an intersection, return time on an ambulance is about a year. It is the same if we refurbish one of our existing ambulances, we’ve lost the ambulance for a year at a minimum,” Fletcher continued.

Fletcher said if any of the ambulances are not available, the department would have to “depend on neighbors either to loan us extra units they may have or for them to take our calls.”

Fletcher said acquisition of the new ambulance will give the department three units available for service while one of the existing units will be refurbished.

“Unless we have an ambulance get totaled, we will have one ready to be refurbished when the new ambulance arrives. That’s our general replacement plan,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher indicated the department has not rotated ambulances in this manner before.

“We’ve never rotated ambulances like this because the lead time to get one built was not a problem,” Fletcher said.

“We were getting a new ambulance every two years. We have not built a new ambulance in five years. If we build a new one from scratch, it will be another four years to receive it and nine years between our ambulance purchases,” Fletcher said.

Reach Terry Baver at [email protected].